Ingredients
- For the cake
- 110g butter plus extra for greasing
- 150g soft light brown sugar
- 2 large free-range eggs
- 210g plain flour, sifted
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground cardamom
- 12 figs, sliced in half
- 50g flaked almonds
- Honey to drizzle
- For the vanilla mascarpone
- 250g mascarpone
- 2 tbsp icing sugar, sifted
- 1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped
Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius/350 Fahrenheit/gas mark 4.
Grease and line a 20cm cake tin with a removable base with parchment paper.
Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until pale. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing until they are incorporated. Fold through the flour, baking powder, salt, cardamom and cinnamon until you have a thick cake batter.
Finely chop 6 figs, leaving the rest cut in halves. Stir through the chopped figs and pour the batter into the cake tin. The batter is thick, so use a spatula to spread across the base of the tin.
Gently press the fig halves into the batter and sprinkle with the almonds. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Cover with foil if you find the almonds brown too much.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool. While the cake is still warm prick it all over with a cocktail stick and drizzle with honey, letting it seep into the holes.
For the vanilla mascarpone mix together the mascarpone cream, the icing sugar and the seeds scraped from the vanilla pod.
Serve generous slices of the cake with a dollop of the vanilla mascarpone.
